Bigfoot might not be real, but the fascination is

View full sizeAP Photo/Rick Jacobs, fileThis image provided Monday, Oct. 29, 2007, by hunter Rick Jacobs shows an image taken by a camera with an automatic trigger set up in Pennsylvania's Allegheny National Forest on Sept. 16, 2007. The only thing certain about the critter photographed by a hunter's camera is that some people have gotten the notion it could be a sasquatch, or bigfoot. Others say it's just a bear with a bad skin infection.

Eric Altman is awaiting test results on “some possible hair samples.” Altman is the director of the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society. He collected the samples recently in Clearfield and Jefferson counties, which he described as Pennsylvania’s “hot area” for bigfoot reports.

Bigfoot sightings in the midstate are dwarfed by the dozens of reports that have come out of the state’s north-central wilds, Altman said. Adams and York counties provide some reports in “areas that are more remote, a little more wooded,” he said.

The existence of bigfoot may remain in doubt, but the fascination with the mythic creature endures.

While many Native American cultures have tales of bigfoot or sasquatch-like creatures in their folklore, modern interest in the phenomenon soared in 1951 with photographs of footprints in California. Most bigfoot reports arise from the West Coast.

Even those who want to believe in bigfoot are skeptical of its existence in Pennsylvania. In a state with 12 million residents, it seems likely the creature would have been spotted by now if he is here.

“We don’t track bigfoot sightings,” said Jerry Feaser, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Game Commission. “The only time in recent years that there was a bigfoot sighting happened, coincidentally, the same week a bigfoot researcher was in the Harrisburg area.”

Investigators for the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society have recorded “some unusual footprints that we can’t really say are bigfoot,” Altman said.

Loren Coleman, one of the world’s most published cryptozoologists (researchers in the study of hidden species), said he thinks there is something real behind some of the bigfoot reports. In the last month, he said, he has heard of at least 10 legitimate reports, all in the northwestern U.S.

Chad Arment, a Lancaster County man who writes books on cryptozoology, does not rule out the presence of bigfoot in Pennsylvania. “There are some interesting old stories, particularly in Central Pennsylvania, of gorilla-like creatures,” he said. Still, Arment said the presence of bigfoot would be a “long shot” in Pennsylvania.

Scott Weidensaul, a Friedensburg nature writer who has written about the search for lost species, doubts that bigfoot is here. “It breaks my heart to say it, but I just don’t think it’s true,” he said. “We would have had a body by now."